OpenAI revamps shopping experience in ChatGPT after struggling with Instant Checkout offering

In this article SHOP JWN Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo, Feb. 3, 2025. Kim Kyung-hoon | Reuters OpenAI is rolling out a new shopping experience within ChatGPT to make it easier for users to find and compare products, after its Instant Checkout feature failed to take off. The company said on Tuesday that shoppers will be able to find products they're looking for by uploading images or describing items and including criteria like their budget, preferences and other constraints. ChatGPT will offer more visual results that people can use to compare different product offerings. "Under the hood, we've improved speed, relevance, and product coverage — so results are more up-to-date and more useful," OpenAI said in a blog post . The update comes after OpenAI pivoted away from Instant Checkout, which allowed users to purchase select items from retailers like Etsy , Walmart and Shopify directly within ChatGPT. OpenAI announced that feature last year and initially billed it as the "next step" in AI-enabled commerce. Analysts previously told CNBC that OpenAI underestimated how difficult the enablement of transactions would be. It struggled to onboard merchants, show accurate data about products, and introduce multi-item carts or connect loyalty memberships. "We've found that the initial version of Instant Checkout did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide, so we're allowing merchants to use their own checkout experiences while we focus our efforts on product discovery," OpenAI said in the latest post. OpenAI said merchants can now share their product feeds and promotions with the company, which means their products are "fully represented" within ChatGPT. Retailers like Target , Sephora and Nordstrom already support OpenAI's new product discovery experience. Merchants interested in deeper integrations can also continue to develop custom apps within ChatGPT, OpenAI s...